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Anna Simola holds a PhD in sociology. She is an FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Families and Sexualities (CIRFASE) at IACS, at the UCLouvain. She is also a member of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Ageing and Care (RG3 Migration, Care and Ageing) at the University of Helsinki.

In her research, she develops a critical orientation and novel approaches for the study of free mobility in Europe. Her broad areas of interest cover the intersections of personal life, migration, families, work and social policies, and the associated issues of freedom, vulnerability, precarity, aging, dependency, and inequality. Her research has been published in leading journals such as Sociology, Journal of European social policy, Work, employment and society and Global Networks.   

Anna’s current postdoctoral research project (2022-2025), funded by Le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), aims at developing a novel conceptual and empirical tools for the study of mobility and transnational family life that brings together cutting-edge theoretisation in sociology of personal life and research on human mobility and transnational families. Set in the context where people are confronted with growing uncertainties related to major transnational crises such as the recent pandemic, the climate crisis and wars escalating in Europe and its vicinity, the study investigates EU migrants’ multidimensional connections with the people and places that matter to them. Anna is working on this study at the University of Louvain, in Belgium, where her promotor is professor Laura Merla. 

Anna obtained her PhD at the University of Helsinki in 2021. Her PhD research titled Passionate Mobile Citizens or Precarious Migrant Workers? Young EU Migrants, Neoliberal Governance and Inequality within the Free Movement Regime" investigated young European Union (EU) citizens experiences of free mobility in precarious labour conditions. Between November 2018 and October 2020, she worked on her PhD study as a visiting researcher at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). From September 2022 until September 2023, she prepared her postdoctoral project as a visiting researcher at CIRFASE at the UCLouvain with a funding from Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Fund. Starting from 2018, she has also been involved in the research work and various publications undertaken at the Centre of Excellence for Research on Aging and Care (RG 3 Migration, Care and Ageing), as well as the Academy of Finland research project ‘Citizenisation in the Local Welfare State’.